Toonhound - The Cloppa Files #1

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	The Cloppa Files #1 The Hound hears from Richard Dacre, the Dialogue Co-ordinator on two seasons of Cloppa Castle... Richard Dacre is a film writer, lecturer, historian, archivist, and owner of Flashbacks Film Memorabilia Archive and Store in London's Soho. He also happens to be an authority on Norman Wisdom and his life on stage, in films and on television and has written a Wisdom biography 'Trouble In Store'. Richard's sister Sue is an accomplished film and stage puppeteer and in the late seventies when she commenced work on 'Cloppa Castle', Richard took on the unique role of Dialogue Co-ordinator - choreographing the voices with the puppets on the series. Here he reminisces about those days and outlines exactly what the job entailed... ______________________________________________________________________
			'Well... I worked on Cloppa Castle - I think the company was called Transcontinental Films - March to September 1978. As far as I remember, this was the first two series, and I had nothing to do with the third or fourth. The studio was a converted church in Southwark Park Road (London). I think when I joined the team they had already started making the puppets and sets, but I might be wrong, it's possible we all began at the same time. I was shunted off to a separate room with all the scripts and ¼ inch tapes containing the professionally recorded dialogue.
	My first job was to cut out all the guff. Not only the mistakes and the unusable takes but also the gaps between dialogue so that everything was up to speed. I was pretty well left to my own devices doing this, which, as you can imagine, was quite a mammoth job with 24 episodes to work on. This was a matter of physically cutting and splicing the tape as and where necessary. Once an episode was completed, I handed the reel over to Mary and John who then timed it and made script cuts to bring the episode to broadcast length. My second job was to take these edited scripts and once more cut the tapes to their instructions. The difference this time was that all these cuts were preserved and labeled, so that they could be restored if necessary. Also, I entered detailed timings on the scripts so that I could locate the smallest snippet of dialogue in seconds - all very methodical work. By the time I finished this, the scheduling was such that the puppets were completed and the sets for the first batch of shoots were ready at the same time and we were ready to roll the camera. Obviously the 24 episodes were treated as a single entity - similar set ups were shot sequentially. Not only did this save time, but also allowed the set builders to continue working on later locations as the camera rolled. There was no dedicated continuity person and the set designers and the puppeteers were expected to take care of this themselves - very difficult - though Mary would invariably pounce on anything that was amiss. During shooting, I was sat to the right of the "stage" and my job was to send the sound to the correct puppet. The puppets' mouth movements were triggered by sound - thus I had to direct that sound to the correct character using levers. Memory and looking at the photo (top) would suggest that a maximum of four puppets could speak together in one take. So, the action would be as follows. Mary would say "episode 12 scene 2". I would scramble for the right tape and locate the scene (the tapes are in that cardboard box under my feet, the scripts in the one next to the desk) using headphones. If necessary, the set would be dressed and John (Read) would light. Then with puppeteers at the ready, she would call action and off we went (she expected us to be ready when she was, seldom checked). Quite high pressured at the beginning but one soon got used to it. Only once was cut dialogue restored - that was pretty hairy. I had to locate the relevant strip of tape, splice it into the reel and then play without holding up the production..... I only have pleasant memories of the whole experience. Great bunch of people producing good work. I recall a pretty good wrap party enlivened by a crate of champagne courtesy of the Lew Grade Organization...' ______________________________________________________________________
				When the 'Cloppa' series wrapped crew members were presented with a special medallion featuring Osmosis, designed by Mary Turner. Here's Richard's prized piece, together with Mary's original artwork. Richard and his sister Sue also supplied all of the 'behind the scenes' photos on these 'Cloppa' pages, for which The Hound is very grateful...


	© Mary Turner / John Read / F2000-2004